It was in the session of 1797 that Mr. Grey first moved “for leave to bring in a bill to reform the representation of the country.” The motion, seconded by Erskine, was debated until three o’clock in the morning—an exceptional sitting in those days—when it was rejected by a Government majority of fifty-eight votes. Although the system of representation was notoriously corrupt, at least half the seats being in the patronage of interested persons, it was thirty-four years before Earl Grey’s measure for reform could be carried, and then only under extraordinary circumstances. After Grey’s earlier defeat, it was felt that in a House of Commons completely submissive to the ministerial dictates, and which resisted amendment, the opposition leaders could make no impression, and they accordingly announced their intention for the present of taking no further part in its proceedings; the voice of Fox was scarcely heard in the House till the century closed.
Meanwhile, after the secession of the Whig party from the debates, the agitation throughout the country increased, political societies became more active, and frequent meetings were held to discuss the necessity for parliamentary reform. One of the most remarkable of these was held under the auspices of Bertie Greathead, the owner of “Guy’s Cliff,” near Warwick; a medal commemorative of this gathering and its object, reform, was struck for the occasion. These medals were a popular method of spreading political opinions. The patriotic reform medal was parodied by another of a loyal nature, representing the devil suspending three halters over the heads of the demagogues, who are mounted in “a condemned cart;” on the one side are shown the applauding “wrong-heads,” while a large assembly of “right-heads” express their contempt for the proceedings.
| Wilkes. | Abbé Siéyès. | Horne Tooke. | C. J. Fox. | William Pitt. | Lord Holland. | Earl of Chatham. |
TWO PAIR OF PORTRAITS. PRESENTED TO ALL THE UNBIASED ELECTORS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 1798. BY JAMES GILLRAY.
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LOYAL MEDAL. 1797.
A parody of the patriotic medal struck in commemoration of the Reform meeting held at Greathead’s, Guy’s Cliff, Warwick.
The Tories exulted over the secession of “the party,” and numerous caricatures appeared, imputing all sorts of offences to the Whigs; and one version represented Fox as “Phaeton” involving the Whig Club in his destruction. We have noticed the candidature of Horne Tooke for Westminster; ever since his prominence upon the occasion of Wilkes’s return for Middlesex in 1768, the “Brentford Parson” had striven to obtain a seat in parliament. He was in 1798 one of the most conspicuous members of the reform associations. Few were his match in ready eloquence, his pen was ever active, and his writings to the purpose. At an earlier stage of his career, a pamphlet appeared, written, it was alleged, by his hand, contrasting the two Pitts with the two Foxes as a pair of portraits; the comparison being in favour of the former. Advantage was taken of this circumstance to bring into discredit the confederation of Horne Tooke (who held more democratic views) with Fox for the advancement of the reform cause. James Gillray designed for the Anti-Jacobin Review his own satirical version of “Two Pair of Portraits, presented to all the unbiased Electors of Great Britain, by John Horne Tooke,” December 1, 1798. The eminent philologer is represented as a portrait-painter, seated before his easel, on which appear the two original likenesses of the Whig and Tory chiefs, Pitt resting on the pedestal of “Truth,” and Fox on that of “Deceit.” The presentment of Lord Holland with the plunder of “unaccounted millions” so frequently quoted, is placed beside the portrait of the patriotic Earl of Chatham, dowered with the “Rewards of a Grateful Nation.” Horne Tooke, who has in his pocket, “Sketches of Patriotic Views, a pension, a mouth-stopper, a place,” is presumed to be retouching his unflattering and sinister portrait of the Whig chief, while demanding of the electors of Great Britain, which two of them will you choose to hang in your Cabinets, the Pitts or the Foxes? “Where, on your conscience, should the other two be hanged?” Allusions to various periods of the limner’s life and principles appear round the studio—the windmill at Wimbledon (where Tooke resided), the parsonage at Brentford, the bust of Machiavel, the shadow or “silhouette” of the Abbé Siéyès; the picture of his old friend Wilkes, in his aldermanic gown as the prosperous and handsomely remunerated city chamberlain, ci-devant Wilkes and Liberty; “The effect in this picture to be copied as exact as possible;” “A London Corresponding Society, i.e. a Sketch for an English Directory;” with a folio of “Studies from French masters, Robespierre, Tallien, Marat,” together with the prospectus for a new work, “The Art of Political Painting, extracted from the works of the most celebrated Jacobin professors.”